The cover of the October 2017 issue of The Atlantic features the headline “The Trump Presidency: A Damage Report.” The headline announces three articles: “Will Donald Trump Destroy the Presidency?” by Jack Goldsmith; “How Trump Is Ending the American Era,” by Eliot A. Cohen; and “The First White President,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I may or may not read the third article; I’m not a fan of Ta-Nehisi Coates.
But I’ve now gone through the first two, and I have to say that, while they’re very intelligent and balanced, they make for very, very grim reading. They’re both just a tad long but, for anybody who is interested in serious analysis of the Trump administration — in these cases, from serious Republican thinkers — I recommend them.
“He disdains the rule of law. He’s trampling norms of presidential behavior. And he’s bringing vital institutions down with him.” That is the verdict of Jack Goldsmith, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a member of the faculty at Harvard Law School, and a former assistant attorney general in the presidential administration of George W. Bush.
“Donald Trump is testing the institution of the presidency unlike any of his 43 predecessors. We have never had a president so ill-informed about the nature of his office, so openly mendacious, so self-destructive, or so brazen in his abusive attacks on the courts, the press, Congress (including members of his own party), and even senior officials within his own administration. Trump is a Frankenstein’s monster of past presidents’ worst attributes: Andrew Jackson’s rage; Millard Fillmore’s bigotry; James Buchanan’s incompetence and spite; Theodore Roosevelt’s self-aggrandizement; Richard Nixon’s paranoia, insecurity, and indifference to law; and Bill Clinton’s lack of self-control and reflexive dishonesty.”
While Jack Goldsmith concentrates mostly on domestic matters, Eliot A. Cohen, who served as the Counselor of the State Department under Secretary Condoleezza Rice, focuses on foreign affairs. This is natural, given that he now teaches at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and has, most recently, authored a book titled The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force.
“For all the visible damage the president has done to America’s global standing,” Cohen argues, “things are much worse below the surface.”
“There are many reasons to be appalled by President Trump, including his disregard for constitutional norms and decent behavior. But watching this unlikeliest of presidents strut on the treacherous stage of international politics is different from following the daily domestic chaos that is the Trump administration. Hearing him bully and brag, boast and bluster, threaten and lie, one feels a kind of dizziness, a sensation that underneath the throbbing pulse of routine scandal lies the potential for much worse. The kind of sensation, in fact, that accompanies dangerously high blood pressure, just before a sudden, excruciating pain.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/is-trump-ending-the-american-era/537888/
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And here’s a conservative reaction to the pivot of the until-relatively-recently-Democratic Donald J. Trump away from his own adopted party back toward the Democrats:
“Trump and His Supporters Care about ‘Wins,’ Not Ideology”
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Meanwhile, on the Left:
You may have heard about the large demonstration against freedom of speech that met Ben Shapiro — like me, a Never-Trump Conservative — when he spoke on Thursday at the University of California at Berkeley. Before that, you may have heard about the “safe spaces” and counseling needed by some of the poor dears enrolled in the very school where the “Free Speech Movement” was born back in sixties, because Shapiro, somebody holding different views than theirs, would be allowed to speak on their campus.
Well, don’t imagine that Utah is immune to such fascistic idiocy:
“U Students Call on Administration to Cancel Ben Shapiro Event”
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Finally, did you hear about the shameful religious litmus test that certain Democratic senators recently sought to impose on a nominee for the federal judiciary?
An editorial from the Deseret News: “We condemn religious tests for office”
I’m proud of the fact that, as the Deseret News editorial observes, three Latter-day Saint senators who were present were vocal in their objections.
From my friend and BYU colleague Ralph Hancock: “Secular liberals should check their own ‘dogma'”
In the Wall Street Journal for Friday, 15 September 2017: “Democrats Find Another Religious Heretic”
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